


Dronk

by CaravanOfCrows



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Jason, POV Levi, Pining, jason being very confused, very briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 10:40:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20872832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaravanOfCrows/pseuds/CaravanOfCrows
Summary: Could I title this something different? Yes.Should I? Probably.Will I? No.





	Dronk

“How did you even get here, Jason?” 

“Well, uh.” He’s so drunk, someone must have given him some faerie liquor or some shit. Asshole. At least I managed to end up with him instead of anyone else. “I was in New York, I guess? I had just graduated, and Lydia got an apartment in the heights, and me and Hale flew out with her to help her move. I was just laying on the floor, I think, because there weren’t any chairs, and we were drunk off wine we got at a bodega. I was drunk and- wait I already said that didn’t I? I was complaining about New York because I fucking hate New York because it sucks and it’s loud and crowded. Hale, they offered to take me home with them which sounds sexual now that I say it out loud, but it really wasn’t.” 

He’s rambling, slurring the ends of his words together. It’s so fucking cute. This isn’t any fair, really. 

“They had an extra boarding pass for some reason and it didn’t have any dates or names or seat numbers which is sketchy as shit, but they let us through at the gate anyways. Also, I think the flight attendant drugged me because it was like two in the afternoon, but I fell asleep. When I woke up I was here, but I don’t really know where here is. Uh, I met this weird merfolk lady-dude-person and they gave me an apartment, which was weird.” 

He’s going to kill me. I know it. They’re gonna ask what happened to me and my tombstone is gonna say “was a useless bi idiot who fell in love with the cutest boy in the entire fucking world.” Jason keeps gesturing with his hands. It reminds me of my brother. 

“Then Hale took me to a café because they said I couldn’t just live inside all the time and everything kinda went to shit because I, uh, I may have forgotten that you live here. And then I saw you and everything got real shitty real fast, ya know?” 

His sense of balance must be whacked, because while he’s talking he tips slowly over onto me. He’s draped over me now, talking into the collar of my dress. I can’t quite understand him. 

“But then tonight Hale was like ‘hey you should come drinking with me to get over running into the love of your life for the first time in like three years in a café,’ so I went with them because I’m a fucking idiot and now I’m drunk as all hell. There’s also only like one bar in this town and you were there anyways so I don’t know why I bothered.” 

I must have heard him wrong. Yeah, that’s what happened. Most definitely absolutely for sure. I must be a fucking masochist, though, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. “You, uh, you what?” I sound surprised, which is bullshit, even though I am surprised. “You did what now in a café?” 

Jason makes a frustrated noise, which reminds me of some baby animal that has gotten itself hopelessly stuck in some ridiculous way. “I ran into you, dummy.” 

Wow. Mean. I can’t believe I’m in love with him. “No, what did you say, exactly?” 

He mutters angrily under his breath in Spanish. I can hear a lot of curses, but I think they’re directed at him and not me. “I said I ran into a fucking llama, okay?” 

That is not what he said, not even close, but it’s telling, anways. Jason is terrible at any form of deception, he’s just too naïve and trusting for it. I may probably be drunk, too, but I can remember that he likes to use “llama” as an acronym for “love of my life.” That doesn’t make any sense, not really, but it makes more sense than anything else. Because I’m a dumbass in denial, that should really be the title of my autobiography, I laugh and say, “Met the love of your life getting coffee yesterday? Didn’t take you for a love at first sight kind of guy.” 

Jason adjusts his posture, he feels much less like he’s just laying on top of me now. He wraps his arms around my shoulders, shifts his hips so he’s not looming over me anymore. I don’t know if I’ve let anyone hold me like this since him. He turns his head into the side of my neck, which feels far more intimate than any of the things I’ve let lonely strangers do to me. “I’m not,” he says into the beating of my heart, so he must feel when it stops. 

He ran into the love of his life getting coffee yesterday. He ran into me getting coffee yesterday. Fuck, I’m the love of his life. 

“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment. He doesn’t move. “I should go to bed.” 

He sounds profoundly sad, in a tragic epic-poetry-ballad way. I’m not surprised. The tortured protagonist of a Shakespearean tragedy had a baby with a Victorian era romantic tragedy author and that baby was a huge fucking dork, a cute fucking dork, who may have just confessed his love for me. Jesus Christ. 

Another long moment passes. “I’m really drunk. I don’t remember where I live. I mean, I did just move like two days ago but also I don’t know what to do or where I am and I’m really fucking drunk.” 

Oh, boy. I only have one option, really, which is simultaneously the selfish choice and the reasonable one. When the stars align like that, you have to take your chances. “I don’t live that far from here. You could… spend the night with me.” 

I don’t sound like a selfish bastard, which is probably a good thing. Unless I do, in fact, sound like the selfish bastard I am and am simply too intoxicated to tell. Maybe Jason just knows instinctively that I’m seven kinds of not like him wrapped up in a little black dress and the scent of lilacs that doesn’t quite mask my sorrow. Maybe he knows and doesn’t care. 

“I think that would be terribly selfish of me,” he says, reminding me that he’s no longer a haunting memory I chased away with strong liquor and sweet nothings whispered into another person’s skin. He’s here, with me, right now. “I’ve been terribly selfish already this evening, I don’t see a reason to stop now.” 

Miraculously, he manages not to trip and fall even once on the walk home. I try not to wonder if that means he leaned over onto me on purpose. Before I can let us in Jason pushes me up against the door. I’ve had a lot of dreams that start like this. Too many. Way too many. Despite my apparent subconscious fixation on this scenario, I don’t have high hopes for tonight. Maybe it’s the fact I’m drunk and he’s drunk, and I’d rather remember banging him, thank you very much. For a long moment he just… looks at me. I’m not pinned in any way, and I’ve gotten taller than him at some point, but his gaze cuts right through me, nails me to the lacquered wood. I’d forgotten how vulnerable he can make me feel. He reaches up on the balls of his feet and kisses me on the forehead. It’s very sweet, comforting in a way I didn’t know I needed. 

Jason steps away. A bit numb, mind still reeling from wanting, panicked mental screaming, and cutting disappointment in that order within the past twenty-five seconds, I let us both in. He’s never been here before, it occurs to me. Three AM is not the time for a tour. I don’t even turn on any lights, just dump my jacket on the table and feel my way along the walls. I left the curtains open in my bedroom, which would be bad if we were doing what I kinda wish we were doing but that we are not, in fact, doing. Because we are not doing this unnamable Thing, the curtains just let the ambient light of the half-moon in. He drags me onto the bed, mostly by flopping over with his arms around my waist. 

He has done absolutely nothing to deserve his strength. It is unearned, stolen power. Gained only by virtue of not being a strange stick-bug person like myself. I would go on about the injustices of power distribution but he’s so… warm… Somehow, he manages to cocoon us both in my comforter. This is unnecessary, it’s far too warm in here even without my traitorous heartbeat, but strangely comforting. 

He pulls me closer with his ill-earned strength, surrounding me in warm softness in a very, very evil attempt at somnolent seduction that is definitely not working. In fact, it is so easy to fend off his assault of drowsiness I could do it with my eyes closed. Hah. He rests his head against my chest. Shit, I think he’s asleep already. Shit, that’s adorable. It’s not usually nearly so easy to fall asleep in someone else’s arms but I’m so tired, and drunk, and tired, and really drunk. Not even just that, but I feel safer than I do most of the time. Feel like if I fell asleep I could wake up with Jason still wrapped around me, everything still fine. 

“I love you,” I say, because I think he can’t hear me. 

Jason can, in fact, still hear me. He says something that’s largely unintelligible but sounds a lot like, “I’m in love with you so take that ya fucking dork.” 

I should be offended, maybe. Smiling is easier. The tangled web of tension in my chest loosens a little, enough for me to let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding. We’re going to be okay, I tell myself, and for the first time I think I might believe it. 

My head hurts. There’s sunlight thrown across my skin, far too bright. This is bullshit, why’d I think it was a good idea to get drunk? Last night is kind of hazy, maybe I’m just tired. I was talking to Hale; my drink was too sweet, but I drank it anyway. We were just talking but then Levi showed up in a cocktail dress and fishnet stockings like he was trying to make fun of me for thinking he cared. But maybe he cares after all because he talked to me, for a long time. I made him laugh with something I said, and the bartender looked at me like I had parted the sea. 

I was tired, and I wanted to leave. Levi left with me and I… I went home with him. That thought is enough to get me to sit up and look around. I don’t recognize a thing, which means I’m probably in Levi’s house right now. In his bed. Oh, boy. This is quite the situation. 

I’m wearing a shirt that isn’t mine. I’m not sure what happened to my jeans. I can’t remember what happened after I got here. I barely remember getting here. I was drunk, I was alone with Levi and now I’m in his bed. But I can't just ask him if we... you know, because that would mean admitting that I want him like that, that it’s not a stretch that I might have made a move somewhere during the hole in my memory. 

I hear footsteps outside the bedroom door. Creaking open, it reveals Levi, wearing a fluffy gray sweater and yoga pants he wasn’t wearing last night. My mind helpfully (unhelpfully) supplies his completely unfair outfit from yesterday. I can remember how he smelled, lilac like always, but also sickly sweet and something sad. I don’t want to know how I know that. 

“You want some breakfast?” he asks, looking casual and not at all like I fucked him last night, which is a good sign, probably. More than that, he looks normal. Like himself again, not like a provocative stranger with empty eyes. 

My heart aches for the past, for when every morning was like this and I didn’t even know what I had to lose. “Yeah,” I say, “Yeah, I do.” 

Jason has been staring at me for all of breakfast. It’s a little weird, but a larger part of me basks in his undivided attention. It used to be like this, I think, it could be like this again. But it can’t. Not when I’ve gone and ruined my life, become someone I’m not. But I miss it, I miss the person I was when I was around him, miss vulnerability and letting down my walls for a change. 

“I've missed this,” he says quietly. 

“I’ve missed you, Jason,” I say back, because it’s true. 

He smiles, and my heart stops for a moment. “Thanks for letting me stay here. You didn’t have to. And thanks for the, uh, shirt?” 

“You got up around midnight complaining that you couldn’t sleep in jeans. I gave you that shirt, but I couldn’t persuade you to put on any pants.” I shrug. “Its not a problem, it’s nice to have company.” 

I don’t tell him that I brought him home with me for entirely selfish reasons. I don’t tell him I lent him that shirt because now he’s walking around wearing my shirt and nobody else can tell but at least I can pretend it means he’s mine. I don’t tell him he told me he loves me. 

If he really loves me, I figure, he’ll say it again someday. And, if I blow it, I’ll still have that memory for only me. 

I smile back at him. I’ve never been good at not keeping secrets.


End file.
